This isn’t just what liberals are saying. It’s what conservatives are thinking, and they’re angry. Annoyed that this is exactly what they thought would happen when he squeaked out a win in the primaries. Frustrated that they kept their criticism of his campaign to a minimum for the sake of the party. Livid at what they consider McCain’s sluggish efforts.

The feeling was perhaps best summed up by a man who appeared at a McCain-Palin event in Wisconsin: “It’s time that you two are representing us, and we are mad.”

The Right can only be depressed as they watch Obama buoyed by a world credit crisis and the deep unpopularity of a president who campaigned but never governed like a conservative. It’s the perfect combination to make a president out of an inexperienced, far-left politician whose background provides a gold mine for any opposition researcher.

To the degree that they are engaged in this election, conservatives are motivated entirely by fear of Obama and what he will do as president when backed by a solidly liberal Democratic House and Senate. They are not driven by love of the Republican candidate, and it shows in the anger present at McCain campaign rallies. Most conservatives will probably vote for McCain, but they also realize they are far less likely to persuade others, and they feel a disaster coming. The enthusiasm the Right felt during the 2004 election, which had been framed as a true ideological clash between Left and Right, simply does not exist this time around.

McCain’s abrupt embrace of a big-government solution to the mortgage crisis during last week’s debate places an exclamation point upon his many apostasies from conservative thought. Never a believer in supply-side economics, McCain had denounced the tax cuts of 2001. His push for campaign finance reform, for carbon emission restrictions, for federal regulation of boxing, and his long-standing defense of the Death Tax prior to this election have always made his agreements with conservatives on other issues appear to be accidental overlaps rather than a sign of common philosophical belief.

What would have happened if Republicans had nominated a conservative this time around? Conservatives must consider the possibility that things would look just as bad as they do now. The Bush presidency, by its mere association with conservative ideas, has ruined many of Republicans’ best issues, creating an overwhelming headwind for any Republican running this year.

But a true conservative might also have shown voters an alternative rather than someone who incites “I agree with John” in the debates; someone to put Obama’s left-wing policies in stark relief.

On top of this, McCain is and has proven to be particularly ill-suited to make the case even for what should currently be Republicans’ strongest issues – lower taxes in hard economic times and energy independence.

Polls demonstrate greater trust for Obama even on these questions. And why shouldn’t they? In a better world, McCain would excoriate Obama for an environmentalist policy of carbon regulation that is designed to prevent emissions by fixing a much higher price on gasoline – perhaps $6 or $7 a gallon. But how can McCain criticize it when he has been one of that proposal’s co-sponsors in the Senate for years? How can he argue effectively against Obama’s opposition to offshore drilling, which he shared only recently? How can he denounce Obama’s anti-business tax policies when he argued against the needed tax reductions of 2001, stating that “too much of this tax cut still goes to the wealthiest Americans?”

In the current anti-Republican environment, and without a candidate positioned to make a strong conservative case on the issues, the public is as ready as ever to accept big-government solutions to every problem in sight. And Republicans are facing a bloodbath, both up and down the ticket.

With his instinctual moderation preventing a more ideological race, McCain’s best weapon is Obama’s record. Obama certainly makes for an easy target, but will this be enough to turn around a losing effort in the campaign’s final month?

If he is to have any chance at this point, McCain must at least make his attacks on Obama more meaningful and relevant for voters. For example, Obama’s collaborations with unrepentant terrorist William Ayers and with convicted felon Tony Rezko both offer proof that he lacks the judgment to handle the economic crisis or the other challenges that presidents face. His shifting explanations of both relationships also evince a lack of integrity. But McCain must also point to Obama’s failures of leadership in connection with these associations, for this is far more important than the associations themselves.

As chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an educational reform project that Ayers founded, Obama presided over a waste of $160 million in donors’ money. The project, under his leadership, failed to improve student achievement in the 210 Chicago schools where it operated, according to the Annenberg Challenge’s final report. And to this day, that project is Obama’s only significant executive experience.

Obama’s legislative leadership was similar, a case study in wasting other people’s money. In Springfield, Obama wrote letters from his public position to get Rezko $14 million for his slum-development enterprise. Obama co-sponsored several pieces of housing legislation favorable to Rezko and other slum-developers, giving them hundreds of millions in subsidies and other tax and regulatory advantages. They in turn funneled money to Obama’s campaigns and then let their buildings deteriorate, even turning off the heat on their tenants during the winter. By his own account, Obama never bothered to follow up on how the money was spent, but the record shows that he worked in every legislative session to provide more for his developer friends.

McCain’s campaign should also pick up on another story that casts doubt upon Obama’s leadership and integrity, carried in late April by the Los Angeles Times on how state Senator Obama and his aide, Dan Shomon, helped steer taxpayers’ money to one of Obama’s private law clients. The client, Robert Blackwell, had just paid Obama $112,000 in his capacity as a private attorney for one of his corporations. State Senator Obama and Shomon then helped Blackwell obtain $320,000 in state tourism grants to hold ping-pong tournaments. As he writes in “The Audacity of Hope,” this work came at a time when Obama was short of cash, and the Times reported that work for Obama at the firm had also been thin. In his state Senate financial-disclosure forms, Obama buried this obvious conflict of interest amid a long list of his firm’s clients. From simply looking at Obama’s disclosures, one could never guess that Blackwell’s company had paid him a majority of his income for 2001.

Could any Republican have risen to the task this year of winning a presidential election? We will never know the answer to that question. But John McCain has less than a month now to prove that he was not the wrong man to beat Barack Obama. As much as conservatives hope he can prove otherwise, they are watching this election now with dread.

David Freddoso, a staff reporter for National Review Online, is the author of “The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate.”